Psychic Tattoo

Chapter 81 The Curse of the Fox Empress
A hundred thousand Yuan for my troubles was quite a sum. This girl looked like an ordinary college student. How could she be so rich? She offered one hundred thousand Yuan without even blinking.

I raised my eyebrows, tempted to ask: “It’s a deal, but can you show me the money?”

"Of course I can." The girl directly took off the watch on her right hand, gently placed on the table, and said, “This watch is the first deposit.”

I looked down and saw that the watch was actually a man's watch - a Rolex. This thing could be worth tens of thousands of Yuan.

I gave the watch to Feng Chunsheng: “Brother Chun, have a look.”

He had seen most of the world, so he knew a lot of things.

He picked up the watch, gave it a shake, and then quickly held it up to his ear. After listening for a while, he put the watch down on the table and said to me, "Authentic Rolex."

“Good.”

I put away the watch, motioned to the girl to sit down and said, "A brief introduction: my name is Yu Shui, and I am the inheritor of the art of Yin and Yang Tattoos.”

“I know.”

The girl also introduced herself. Listening to this introduction, I found out this girl was a celebrity.

She was a college student in Minnan University. She was a senior this year, and her name was Su Yizi.

Su Yizi was studying in the music department at the university.

She had been studying there for four years, obtaining a lot of music awards.

She had recently uploaded a video on the network, which went viral and had several tens of millions of views.

In the video, her musical abilities were clearly revealed.

She played a drum, and then she played an erhu, then a sanxian, and finally played a section on a dulcimer.

After she had played these, she edited the sounds of the four musical instruments into a single track, and finally added angelic choir voices.

On the internet, she called herself Huaiyang Music Girl.

Her hometown was Huaiyang, and she played traditional Chinese instruments.

In ancient times, the ten li-long Huaiyang River was a great place for classical music.

There was no doubt about her musical talent. Even though she was in college, she performed everywhere, earning over four million Yuan in prizes.

It could be said that she was a fairly rich woman.

No wonder she was able to take out one hundred thousand Yuan so casually.

I asked her: “When did your livor mortis appear?”

"When did it appear? About three months ago." She said, "It started three months ago, but in the beginning it wasn’t so noticeable and the color was very shallow. You wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know it was there. Recently, the situation began to get worse.”

She said her livor mortis affected her performance very much.

She had to cancel her performances for the whole month, and if it went on like this, it would be a heavy blow to her career. After all, she was being paid hundreds of thousands for each performance by this point.

I nodded and said to her, "This matter is actually a bit strange. Have you noticed any strange things in your life recently?"

"Strange things? Not really" She shook her head.

"There has to have been a cause. Your livor mortis didn’t appear out of thin air." Feng Chunsheng smiled to her and said, "Tthink hard. Maybe, you really had encountered something strange?"

She thought for a long time and said, "Nothing happened recently, but when I was a junior in college, everyone in my dormitory was cursed."

“Cursed?”

She unnerved me. Did this girl know what a curse was?

I asked her, “What kind of curse?”

Her mouth showed an evil, charming smile. She lowered her voice and said to me and Feng Chunsheng, "The curse of the Fox Empress."

What was the Fox Empress?

I looked to Feng Chunsheng.

He secretly told me and said there were five wild spirits in the Northeast: Hu, Huang, Bai, Liu and Hui. Hu referred to a fox. In the northeast it was called the Fox Empress.

In the south, some places called it Miss Fox.

I immediately understood, and asked Su Yizi, “So what was this curse about?”

She asked me: “Do you really want to know?”

"Sure." I nodded and said, “I have to understand these things, otherwise how could I help you get rid of the livor mortis?”

She immediately bowed her head, burying her face in her hands. Her mood was very low. The livor mortis on her hands was very obvious.

She thought for a long time, and said to me, "I haven’t talked to anyone about the curse of the Fox Empress for four years. Today, I will tell you about it.”

“Good.”

I nodded and motioned for her to continue.

“Four years ago, I was a junior, and the relationship between me and the other people in my dormitory was very good. At that university, there were six people per dorm, but one dropped out, so there were only five of us left. The oldest was a northeast girl called Zhu Wei. I had heard that her family raised a lot of foxes.

“One time, the five of us went on an outing, and Zhu Wei brought a pair of foxes. Her foxes were called Little Black and Little White. One was black, the other was white. The two foxes were actually a couple. Zhu Wei brought those foxes so as to let us taste the delicious fox meat. She said that fox meat had many health benefits, and the taste of fox was especially delicious.

“We were juniors. We were brave, and when we heard that there were delicious foxes to be had, of course we would eat them.

“We took the foxes to the riverbank, and prepared the grill, seasoning and water. Zhu Wei used an iron cage to carry the foxes. When we were ready, we began to kill the foxes. Zhu Wei dragged out the black fox, and the second-oldest girl picked up a stone to kill it.

“The white fox in the cage went wild and started rattling the cage and screaming. Zhu Wei said the white fox was reluctant to see the black fox die. This all made me a little nauseous, so I told Zhu Wei we shouldn't eat those poor foxes.

“Zhu Wei said they were not poor. Many of her foxes were killed and eaten. The animals were kept for people to eat. When she said that, the black fox suddenly turned to bite her. Zhu Wei was angry; she threw the fox to the ground, and the second-oldest girl took up the stone and mercilessly hit the fox's head. Then, Zhu Wei used her knife to cut off the fox's front legs. The third-oldest girl used the knife cut out the heart of the fox. The fourth-oldest girl used a stone to smash the fox's legs.

“Thus, the fox was immediately killed by the four roommates.

“At that moment, the white fox got even crazier. It broke the cage, rushed out, and quickly bit the bodies of all four girls. After that, the white fox ran into the woods to escape.

“When it was about to go into the woods, the white fox suddenly stopped its footsteps, turned its head, and glared at us. Then it went into the woods, never to be seen again.

“In the afternoon, they all took out their anger on the black fox. They ate the black fox viciously, and there was not a bone left. After they finished, we went back to the dormitory. That night, we all had the same dream. In the dream, the fox said to us, ‘The curse of the Fox Empress shall not be extinguished until you die! I will make you suffer the same fate you have inflicted upon my mate.’

“This was the curse of the Fox Empress. The next morning, when we woke up, we found a pool of blood under our pillows.”

I asked her, "Did the curse of the Fox Empress come true?"

"Yes," she quietly said.

Her words were quiet. However, I read her inner fear from her eyes.

She said, "Zhu Wei cut off the legs of the fox, so she died. When she was jogging in the park one night, she was hit by a car and her legs were gone."

"Her legs were gone?" I asked Su Yizi.

She said, “Yes. Zhu Wei was killed by a car. When the ambulance came, the doctor found that her two legs had disappeared, and he couldn’t find them anywhere.”

This was weird. Was it because the curse of the Fox Empress came true? Otherwise, those legs could not have just disappeared. Even if were crushed by the wheels, they should have been there.

She said again, "The second-oldest girl used a stone to smash the black fox's face, so in the second year, when she was swimming in the river, she drowned. Her whole body was bloated when she was found, but her face was stripped away.”

A drowned woman with her face stripped away? That was weird, too.

The deaths of the other two were almost the same as the way they killed the black fox.

She said, "But they had killed the fox, while I did not harm it. Why did I get the curse? Unfair, unfair! Give me a few years, and I will be the best musician in the country! I do not want my life to end this summer. Please help me!"

As she spoke, she was no longer calm, her expression now filled with fear and resentment.

She was afraid of the curse, and unwilling to allow herself to die by it.

I patted her shoulder and said, "I will see you tomorrow. You will be OK now that you have found me."

"Thank you," she said. "I’ll go home. We’ll talk more tomorrow; perhaps you could help me."

"That's for sure," I said to her.

Then she left.

I took a deep breath and said to Feng Chunsheng, "Brother Chun, we have a lot of work to do. Tomorrow we have to go with Brother Yu to deal with the ghost house matter.”

He frowned and did not speak.

I prodded him, "Brother Chun?"

"Don't disturb me. I think Su Yizi was not telling the truth. There’s a big hole in her story," he said.